


There is No Witty Euphemism For Dividing And/Or Conquering

by karanguni



Series: Nasdack [13]
Category: FFVII, FFXII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Multi, Stockmarket AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-01
Updated: 2009-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tseng's in New York, and so is the fledging Shinra-Bunansa empire: whether that is the point or the problem is anybody's guess. Hedging on futures can be such a tricky thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There is No Witty Euphemism For Dividing And/Or Conquering

Even though he now works under the Shinra corporate name, Balthier still doesn't sit in on boardroom meetings so much as he drops by every once in a while, a presence at the far end of the table with his legs or arms crossed, watching, sleeping, breathing.

It's an effort now to catch up with all the work that was neglected during their earlier games of cat-and-mouse; the both of them have to be in the office almost all-hours. The days are a blend of being either exhausted or refreshed, Rufus can't tell the difference anymore - it's always been the same to him, in any case, the trigger-flick of sleeplessness pushing him forward through each day, each night, each breath that comes harder in the too-early mornings.

Composure, for him, is an easy game; spending a lifetime playing poker with his fate and poster boy to the tabloids and Rufus sometimes seem to lack any facial expression at all. It's three, four, five am nights and seven am mornings, nine am brunches, twelve pm board meetings that keep him on the knife-edge of competence, running fast as he can just so that his world moves as fast as he wants it to, moves fast enough to keep up with him. Rufus looks at Balthier, eyes sliding past the tired old men and the aged young ones, and sees electricity. He sees something he can understand.

Balthier's at this board meeting because he can be, because his name means enough, because Rufus enjoys watching people talk to the Bunansa heir, trying so fucking hard even though Balthier's worth nothing these days. He's everything Rufus isn't, and Rufus watches him talk and talk and just fucking talk with something in the pit of his stomach that feels disturbingly like hunger. Everyone else here is a financier, an economist, a mathematician: they talk about options and derivatives, capital-debt ratios and regression analysis. Balthier doesn't know what any of those things mean, but he understands them better than some of the people seated next to him. It makes Rufus itch with the urge to compete or to own.

Across the table, Balthier catches his eye, and all Rufus wants to do is to take him out of here, fuck him until this meeting matters to him, until the figures that Balthier sneers at are more than just goddamned numbers, until Shinra means more to the man than a surname worth abusing, until Balthier really sits down, stays still, stays in one place, stays.

Tseng leans in from next to him and murmurs into his ear, 'Concentrate, Rufus.'

'I am,' Rufus replies, quietly.

Tseng slides him a report. 'Then stop watching Balthier with that expression on your face.'

'Are you telling me that you don't find him distracting?'

'To me, Balthier's more of a nuisance than a pleasant side-note,' Tseng says before returning to his original position.

'Hm,' Rufus mutters. He stops looking at Balthier, but he wonders, idly, as the people around him talk in slow motion about the financial world ending and a new world order, why the hell he wants someone else, why he needs something more than Tseng at his right hand, why there's even room in his life for a two-timing son of a bitch who doesn't give a shit about himself, his friends, his reputation or his life.

Maybe he really is as selfish as everyone tries to tell him he is.

Rufus puts his pen to his mouth, taps it against his jaw, and looks up again to watch Balthier's eyebrows rise, his eyes slant, his mouth curve.

-

Balthier discovers that the two work at Rufus' dining table more often than they eat at it. Rufus dines out: French one night and Italian the next, fusion and Japanese and Chinese, on his own if his schedule allows it, with the men he needs to buy on every other day, with Tseng on the rare occasion that Tseng deigns to join him, with Elena because she's lovely and smiles at the cameras. His penthouse suite is full of the smell of fresh wood lacquer and window cleaner: it is his second home; the office is his first. Tseng's flat is the only space they share a that's lived in. Balthier finds that curious.

'New addition?' Tseng asks when he arrives at Rufus' apartment at nine-thirty in the evening one night, walking through the door with a laptop tucked under his arm and car keys dangling from his fingers. His eyes pass over the splash of red and gold that's emerged, viciously attention-seeking and bright, at the far end of Rufus' living room. It's garishly out of place in the midst of so much white, black and deep grey wood.

'It came this afternoon,' Rufus replies from where he's reading a set of company profiles on his Balthier-length couch. 'Shipped in my name, payment on delivery, apparently purchased from some godforsaken gallery in Munich. I don't know what the hell it's supposed to be.' He sounds diffident, which Tseng translates as Rufus being half-pleased at the arrival of a painting that would rival Pollock in randomness and a four-year-old child in technical execution.

Tseng spares the monstrosity another glance before settling at the other end of the couch. 'A Rorschach test bought with love,' he comments. 'Something for Balthier to look at in the early mornings, maybe, when he's bored of anarchy and sleeplessness?'

Rufus puts down the reports as Tseng cracks open his computer. 'It's in bad taste.'

Tseng types his password and does not look up. 'It's his style.'

-

'I'm thinking,' Balthier says when he visits two weeks later, dragging Tseng by the tie and with one hand in the man's back pocket. Rufus pushes them both breathless against the elevator doors that open, spilling them into the penthouse corridor in a mess of limbs and slithering fabric. 'I'm thinking that you need some bloody thick curtains, so that it's not so fucking bright in the mornings.' It is, right at that point, technically morning already, black as the sky is outside: five am and they've been out since god knows when, doing god knows what: Balthier's drunk, Rufus is tipsy, Tseng is Tseng. 'Drapes, Shinra, in black, or maybe red.'

'I like the unobstructed view,' Rufus shoots back, fumbling with the nonsensical series of buttons on Balthier's shirt.

'Only because it lets you stare down your nose at the rest of the world,' Balthier growls, negotiating the loop of Tseng's Windsor with little success. 'Do you look out and think "my city" every time you gaze out of the damn floor-to-ceiling windows?'

'How many times,' Tseng cuts in, 'must you attempt to redecorate Rufus' penthouse to your own liking? It's not just the pieces of art anymore - '

'Oh, don't start with me, Tseng. You won't let me buy you a new dining table,' Balthier rants, 'you won't let me buy you a fucking air mattress. Your apartment is on some godlessly noisy street corner. And Shinra likes his things so minimal that I'd swear he grew up sleeping on brick and rising with the sun. I'm tired of living in discomfort. I don't share either of your penchants for martyrdom.'

'Buy your own fucking place,' Rufus snarls, fed up with Balthier's shirt. Something tears. 'Or take one of my other places.'

'Why should I?' Balthier laughs, his fingers digging into Tseng's scalp hard enough that it hurts. 'Especially when it's so much fun to play with other people's toys?'

-

'They're not exactly drapes, Rufus,' Tseng observes a week later, running his fingers down the broad flats of the newly installed wooden Venetian blinds.

'It's my penthouse,' Rufus says, serene.

Tseng laughs, quietly.

-

Thanksgiving weekend looms like an unwelcome distraction. Rufus doesn't quite see the point in an interminably long holiday break spent feasting while the financial world writhes in its death throes. He thinks instead of all the ways in which the average household will tighten its belt, a slow asphyxiation of the local and international economies starting from the very supermarket aisles of the nation.

He walks the streets on whim or whenever it's decided by mutual lack of conversation that it's time for him to visit Tseng and not the other way around, and glances at the slashed prices on celebratory foodstuffs; turkey and cranberry sauce and stuffing all sitting on shelves, despondent and homeless as the streets start emptying out into Brooklyn and Queens. The Times writes articles about families creatively cutting down on the size of their gatherings, co-ops doing potluck, roommates in those few, barely-functional lofts pitching in and splitting bills. Rufus isn't touched by these things, having no real attachment to either money or the accumulation of any sort of fraternity. Rufus, being truly rich, is one of the few people in the city who can afford to live a truly poor existence: he lives, functionally, off the interest on a number of accounts, eats modestly, buys little, and prefers playing with the hierarchy, rearranging old stones, and casting down his father's empire to any sort of financial megalomania. Rufus invests only in industry.

He hasn't celebrated Thanksgiving in a while, and wouldn't call what he'd done before that celebrations. His father and the ghost of his mother and the sound of metal scraping china are all that remain of past years. Rufus doesn't long for anything; this is how he lives, constant and unstoppable. Fact and circumstance. The pictures in all the windows are of husbands and wives, and children. Rufus doesn't desire to be the latter, and has no inclination for the former.

Rufus strips off his gloves when he hits the stairwell of Tseng's house. It's second nature to tug one of them off more slowly; early in Chicago he'd gone crazy every time his ring hit the ground, yanked off too carelessly to go spinning crazily in the air.

He raps on Tseng's door when he reaches it. Tseng pulls it open a moment later, hand already outstretched to take Rufus' coat. When Rufus looks past his shoulder, Tseng's manages a quiet laugh.

'He's not here, and I wouldn't hide him even if he were.'

Balthier's like the ghost of Christmas to come, flitting in and out of their lives. 'Where's he been?' Rufus asks, tugging at his shirtsleeves, folding them up. He feels overdressed in Tseng's apartment and it's entirely Tseng's fault. The scarred dining room table, the threadbare couch, the sturdy but aged furniture, and everything clean but too scrubbed. 'He's slipped out of the office every day of this damned week. Tracking him is impossible.'

Tseng goes for his kettle, pours hot water onto cheap teabags that produces tea which has absolutely no effect on either of them, and presents Rufus with a cup. 'He doesn't like being leashed.'

Rufus sips, glad for the warmth, and lets Tseng do what he wants. It could be one thing or another: there's never a set pattern, no order to their meetings and no agenda. Tonight it's light touches, through his hair once and down his side before Tseng settles his fingers on the hollows of Rufus' hips. It makes Rufus, stupid with the sounds of carolling and Sinatra, want to sway.

Tseng's voice is hypnotic, familiar, serious, lacking all of Balthier's traits. 'I hear he's planning to run away for a little while.' It's probably for Rufus' sake that Tseng doesn't bother to acknowledge the blond's indrawn breath, the jerk of his body tensing. 'Not to London,' Tseng clarifies, as used as he is to interpreting the sound of Rufus' breathing. 'Somewhere close by, probably.'

'Tired of us already, is he?' Rufus sets his cup aside. He brings his arms up about Tseng's shoulders.

'I doubt it,' Tseng replies, wry. 'But if you want to know, you'll have to ask him. I'm not in the business of looking after his private affairs.'

'Even when you're a part of them?' Rufus asks, arch, as they step towards Tseng's bedroom in a slow, half-blind dance.

'Especially,' Tseng qualifies, 'when I'm a part of them.'

-

It's not called creeping because Rufus isn't being subtle about it. He chooses not to be: he tells his secretary to put it in his timetable, Wednesday afternoons 4-6 blocked out - no lunch meetings, no calls, the only people allowed through are Tseng and his personal broker, both of whom already know Rufus well enough not to bother him with peculiarities and fine print. Every third day of the week now, Rufus shuts his office door behind him and walks past everyone else - past Reno, who inevitably quirks him a suggestive eyebrow, past Elena, who invariably looks both pleased and envious, past Rude, who says nothing, and - if he's around - past Tseng, who doesn't bother to look up. The elevator takes him downstairs and into Balthier's laboratory, though it's evolved now into something quite beyond that. The name sticks because of the others, who know (to their benefit) very little about what Balthier actually does; Rufus terms the place, very simplistically, Balthier's, and Tseng prefers the more sardonic description of playpen.

The level clears out back into the Shinra garage, and since his moving in Balthier's converted a largish space at that back gangway into a private workplace. There's an old Jaguar there, its guts half emptied out. He's been working on it for a while, slowly and incrementally as if savouring it over the weeks. Rufus doesn't ask; many times when he's here he doesn't say much at all. It's observation, for him. Or acquaintance, Rufus hasn't quite decided. All he chooses to favour is the concept that the best way to get to know someone is to watch the way he works. Balthier swings between orderliness and chaos, down here. There are any number of computers running at his expansive, sprawling desk, where Balthier now sits, a phone cradled between his neck and ear. He talks, and Rufus filters it as some deal regarding research and development. Whether it's legitimate or not is questionable, but half the reason why Tseng's providence to Balthier included millions of dollars in funding is because there's no better leash than trust.

Rufus knows that his own mind would probably never have worked that way. He watches Balthier's fingers play with the coil of the phone cable and knows, with the clarity of those obsessed with self-reflection, that he's too invested in Balthier, too concerned about what the man is doing to his relationship with Tseng and too caught up with his own thoughts about Balthier to be able to play that sort of a game. It's hard for Rufus to treat people as less than tools, but harder still to treat the people he does value as mere cogs in the machine. Training in economics engrains this in Rufus: humans are not programmes. Dealt with individually, they cannot be predicted. They cannot be reliably manipulated.

Tseng isn't held back by any sort of theoretical limits, though. Rufus envies that. He looks at Balthier, who meets his gaze cockily and with a slow blink of invitation, and knows precisely how ineffective power and money and ambition all are as weapons against this man Bunansa.

'I'll call you next week,' Balthier says, his voice still easily fielding his British accent in spite of the months he's now been in America without movement or fleeing or change. 'Have something for me by then and we could, hm, renegotiate. Yes. Yes. Goodbye.'

The phone gets replaced in its cradle with a contemplative click. Balthier turns in his chair to face Rufus proper, crossing his legs as he comes to a stop. 'Back again, Shinra? I'm beginning to wonder if I'm some sort of particularly amusing zoo animal that you keep in this basement of yours.'

'You're not half as wild enough,' Rufus replies, folding his arms one over another. He leans against the far edge of Balthier's desk, an expanse of paper and profiles and protocol between them. 'We have you quite tamed, don't we?'

'Oh, not you,' Balthier laughs, eyes glittering. 'And certainly not Tseng.'

Rufus doesn't push. The figures speak for themselves, just like the calendar on the wall. 'Mm,' he says. 'Tseng has his hands full with the companies you've directed towards him. He says you've managed to deliver what I asked for. Green energy, patent-pending technology, start-ups seeking sponsorship. I'm impressed.' Rufus reaches out and flicks one of Balthier's spare sheets of paper. 'For a long while I was considering whether your abilities in management and industry really were restricted to inflation and financial packaging. For a man with your kind of training to come out and work on the bigger picture?' Rufus drums his fingers. 'It's rare.' It's the closest Rufus ever quite comes to a compliment.

'I'm quite the endangered species, yes,' Balthier says, leaning back in his chair to prop his legs up on the table. 'Are you here to pick my brains? I'll help you along, then.' His hands settle on the base of his stomach, fingers laced together. 'The big picture, as you Americans call it, is the whole point, isn't it? The lights on the board. The pieces on the game table. The whos and whens and hows. All you need to do it push one or the other in the right direction and you set a chain to quickening.' Balthier shrugs. 'I don't have to have been brought up by a family so bureaucratic as your own to know that.'

'I've come to think it's a bit ironic,' Rufus says.

Balthier cocks an eyebrow. 'What?'

Rufus motions between the two of them. 'Us, and what we do. They always told me that running the company would be a matter of span. Expansion, vision, seeing everything all at once.' He laughs, quietly. 'That's how my father ran the company, at least. Always branching outwards, acquiring anything that stood in his way. When the money started to run a little thin on oil and electricity, my grandfather went sideways into urban planning, then transportation and cargo. That wasn't quite enough for my old man. After his coronation it was finance, banking. That taught him how to be a class liar, I'll give you that. Banking gave this family the best education that it could have received. Packaging debts and passing them on became part and parcel of a game of musical chairs and liability. We're very,' he says, 'very good at dealing with responsibility.'

'You sound like your family's very good at learning how not to take any,' Balthier says.

'Oh,' Rufus nods. 'Oh, we were. Quite good. Funnelled any excess off into funding research in our petrochemical divisions. Mako is ours, though no dealer or policeman will ever track a drug like that to anything even close to a Shinra lab. After that it was natural to go into other kinds of transportation, other kinds of finance. That's why Tseng's here, you know.'

'To chaperone you on your nightly adventures out into the big, bad world?'

Rufus chooses to ignore that in favour of sampling the curiosity written plain on Balthier's face. 'He was on scholarship, Shinra-funded and paid for every cent of the god damned way. Tuition to a good out-of-state school. They told him not to apply for financial aid so he didn't; every ounce of the debt was Shinra's to bear. School fees, books, a laptop, clothing and food allowance, extra-curricular allowance. Dorms. Transport. He must've cost Shinra a few hundred thousand, all of it neatly added up and negated, conditional on him working for the company afterwards. So once he was in there was really no going out.'

Balthier scoffs. 'You're making him sound like a spy.'

'The training must have seemed a little bit like that,' Rufus laughs. 'God, my father was filthy with his plans. What was one poor son of a bitch Asian to him? Tseng owed the company his life. Anything it wanted him to do, he'd do. Every crime syndicate needs administration -- that's what makes them different from the thugs on the street. Hands that don't get dirty, hands that pull strings and roll out the carpeting. We called it administrative research, for however long it must've lasted. They did all the dirty work - when money was needed, they shorted stocks. When men were needed, they bought them out with wine, women, song. My father came to rely on them so much that they terrified him. They were peasants ruling alongside royalty. Every once in a while he'd jerk their chain, try to keep them in check. Force the department head to do things like, hm.' Rufus looks at Balthier. 'Babysit. Teach a young boy not to play tricks or have too much fun.'

'God, you make your life sound like a fairy tale,' Balthier comments. 'Who was Tseng in this? The prince charming?'

'You'll have to ask him that,' Rufus shrugs. 'I'm not sure if he's decided what he wants to be yet. I always thought, after all, that a man like Tseng would be more...' Rufus flicks his fingers thoughtfully. 'Thorough than he is now, should he ever be in a relationship he takes seriously.'

'Are you complaining?' Balthier asks, his voice deeply amused. 'About your married life?'

'Not so much complaining as commenting,' Rufus says mildly. 'Tseng never acts out of his place. He never stays, even though he's always around. He still lives in that apartment.' Rufus says the word with a certain amount of loathing.

Balthier nods. 'It's more of a kennel, really, that hovel of his.'

'Then there was you,' Rufus says, his voice soft and his eyes sharp. He covers the distance between their two desks, and reaches out with one hand to touch the low dangle of Balthier's right ear ring. 'A Bunansa, possibly one of the few families as equally or more blue-blooded than my own. And I've wondered ever since, why? Tseng's certainly not promiscuous. I wonder some days if Tseng is even emotional. He's never wanted anything, but then he had you.' Balthier reaches up to catch Rufus' hand, but that doesn't stop Rufus from going on. 'And if he had you, who else did he have? Were you unique? Was I unique? I used to laugh with him about the gold-diggers, but was he one himself? Was it for the power?' Rufus asks, turning his palm in Balthier's to catch the other man's fingers. He strokes them, then touches each ring until he finds that simple, familiar band of silver. 'Or did he genuinely care? Where did the two of you meet? How did he even know you?'

'Fantastic fuck party,' Balthier murmurs, but his voice is too low.

Rufus ignores him. When Balthier tugs his hand back, he doesn't let go. 'Yet here you here, and here I am.'

'Let go,' Balthier says.

Rufus leans in to press an open-mouthed kiss to the edge of Balthier's lips. 'For whatever reason,' he says, his breath warm on Balthier's cheek, 'and for whatever purpose, I trust him.'

'You're an idiot,' Balthier replies.

'No one's perfect,' Rufus murmurs. He pauses. 'And I trust you as well.'

Balthier turns his mouth against Rufus'. 'Whatever for, you stupid little sod?'

'Well,' Rufus says, placing his left hand on the nape of Balthier's neck. 'One way or another, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I've been paranoid all my life. Now I want to see what happens when I let my guard down.'

'Nothing, Shinra,' Balthier growls. 'Absolutely nothing.'

Rufus kisses him again. 'All right,' he says, pulling back. 'Then do nothing.'

The phone rings. Balthier reaches back, slowly, and picks up. Rufus listens to him go through the formalities. He straightens his cuffs, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt and yanking once, then twice, before he sinks down onto his knees in the space between Balthier's legs.


	2. You Can Work From Home So Long As We Can Work On You

_Earlier_

When Balthier stalks past, dark, scowling and not-quite-dangerous, a scorned package tucked tight under one arm, Tseng leans back and thinks: this has been a long time coming.

"Paisley!" Balthier shouts as he shoulders into Rufus's office. There's a twist of mystification in his expression, and not enough of the ever-present smile about his lips; with a flick of his wrist he throws the shirt, still packaged, onto Rufus's desk. "As if satin and a print wasn't bad enough, you have to opt for paisley?"

"I thought you liked Art Nouveau."

"In my architecture, Shinra, not on my back – and anyway, Mr Daddy-Paid-For-My-MBA, Nouveau has conspicuously different origins to paisley."

Rufus barely looks up. Tseng can see the corners of his lips twitch suspiciously. "If anyone can look good in paisley, it's you."

The exchange is quite clear, thanks to the low lip of Rude's desk partition and Rufus’s interpretation of transparent business practices taking a literal turn. The whole office can see; the fact that they can hear is a novelty. Balthier knows Rufus's office is soundproof, but the wide-flung door behind him makes of the whole scenario a mockery. A play, Tseng thinks. Balthier does so like to play.

Neither Rufus nor Balthier smile. The shadows are there, the hint of laughter, the matching lilt when they both say paisley as though the word is a code for something else entirely. Which it probably is: Tseng marvels, sometimes, at how much of a different language these rich kids speak.

Balthier cracks first, with a smile that makes him look like he wants to bite Rufus' head off. His hands rise, his fingers deft, and his shirt comes off, which subsequently leaves him standing shirtless before his audience. He snatches from where he discarded, swiftly, and rips open the offending gift. He uses his teeth on the plastic in a manner unfortunately reminiscent of how he tackles a foiled condom.

'Oh,' Elena whispers, her eyes wide and almost the only part of her visible over her partition. 'Oh my God, he's not doing this.'

Rufus rocks back in his chair, cocks an eyebrow with an expression too close to Balthier’s for Tseng’s own comfort, and steeples his fingers. He's too young for the mannerism. It makes him look like a child playing at his father's desk.

With a crackle of static, Balthier shakes out the shirt. He slides the stiffener out of the collar.

'Oho,' Reno whispers, 'Len, he totally is. Way to call the bossman's bluff.'

Still smiling, or grimacing, Balthier smoothes the shirt against his flank and unfastens the buttons viciously.

'A bluff?' Rude speaks low enough only Tseng, right by his side, can hear. 'Or something else entirely?'

'Gossip's the wrong color for your complexion,' Tseng says, mildly.

'I could get you for discrimination with that comment.'

Tseng looks at Rude, then back at Rufus' office where Balthier still stands, one arm inside offending paisley (or paisley, rather), and still mostly shirtless.

'Before or after all the sexual harassment suits are filed?'

'Mmph.' Rude nearly grins. 'As long they're not paisley suits.'

And the shirt is on.

Balthier snaps his heels together and whips off an admirably military salute. Clad in a pattern better known for free loving, it's as good as political commentary. Tseng nearly laughs.

'Thank you for the shirt, sir!' Balthier not-quite manages to bark. 'Especially seeing as you bought out all of my assets not quite two months ago and left me with, well, not even the shirt on my back, it's much appreciated!'

Rufus recovers his pen, and never loses his poise. 'You're welcome.'

Heads drop back to monitors when Balthier kicks the door open; he strides into the open plan precinct, shoulders painfully squared. The satin swishes as he walks, and makes it pretty damn clear where he's heading; Tseng leans back in his chair and looks up at six foot four of pissed off paisley'd Englishman.

'If this is like the Ikea thing,' Balthier mutters, 'and it turns out to be your idea, I am going to break something again. This time it won't be a couch.'

'On occasion,’ Tseng reminds him, ‘Rufus does come up with ideas all on his own.'

Balthier's eyes narrow. 'I see he learned his notion of revenge learned at your knee.'

'Well,' Tseng considers the riot of color on display, 'at least he's not going to lose you against the white of his couch. And bedspread. And curtains, and walls, and floor tiles. And, you know, the entirety of New York.'

'Going,' Balthier says, 'to break something, Tseng.'

'Not your budget,' Tseng acknowledges, 'not with Rufus buying you clothes, anyway. Is that a generic?'

'Hey,' Rude tries, 'I think the color looks good on you.'

Balthier sounds absolutely wretched with despair. 'Rude, you're wearing sunglasses, indoors, how can you even tell what color – oh, fuck it, fuck you. I'm going out for a smoke.'

In the wake of half-subdued laughter (Elena the loudest, surprisingly) Balthier leaves behind him, Tseng straightens the spread of his papers and sets them back in their folder. 'You don't need to look at me so reproachfully,' he says to Rude, 'I'll buy Balthier something to make up for the fact that he thrives on public humiliation, and no doubt enjoyed this whole performance more than you can imagine.'

'Like what?'

Tseng’s smile is only ever just a shadow. 'A shelf full of Mucha.'

Rude tips his sunglasses down and grins. 'You really are a bastard, aren't you?'

-

'But what do we do with him,' Elena asked Tseng, way back then when ideas were first born. Not yet, anyway. 'He's got science behind him, engineering, practical experience in brokering but nothing actual; he knows just about everyone – but I mean, what can he do in an office?'

'You're too young to remember,' Tseng explained, 'but Shinra used to run this company to make money. He made money to make more money; that money made him more money, more than any one man could ever need; and then he made more money. Rufus – is not his father; he will always deny himself excess. He makes money to... spend it. To make a difference.'

'This is the shift you and Rufus were going on about last Friday over lunch.' Reno met Tseng’s eye only briefly, attentive to his paper folding. A paper plane, Tseng saw, with a paperclip as weight. Reno regarded it carefully before he aimed it at Elena. 'Time to start challenging the old giants, bossman?'

'We know power's always going to be an issue,' Tseng said.

Reno laughed and lofted his plane. It spun a lazy spiral, deflected by Elena’s glare. 'Between a Shinra and a Bunansa, that's one of your crassest fucking understatements.'

'Yes,' Tseng said, 'and like most of your targets, you also completely miss my point. I'm talking fuel, Reno; power. Shinra started as Shinra Electric, sold cheap power until he owned small nations; with government support and no US watchdog he segued all too easily into a hundred illegal enterprises. How many small nations ruined; how many large nations indebted, and all for Shinra's low cost per kilojoule power?’

‘And now when it's all going to run out, Rufus steps into his father's shoes only to step in a great pile of dog shit?’

Tseng raised an eyebrow, refused to rise any further to that, and nodded.

Rude spoke only once. 'Balthier's not that kind of engineer.' One of Reno's paper planes curved too close to his skull; Rude caught it and crumpled it, definitively.

'No,' Tseng agreed, 'but like Elena says, Balthier knows people, and he knows scientists, and most significantly, Bunansas are known for getting things done. No matter what the personal cost.'

-

'So,’ Rufus says, when he at last regards the latest of invoices, all completed by Balthier’s calligraphic signature, ‘do you want to explain why my company's spending so much on your playboy boyfriend’s playground?'

Tseng looks at Rufus, long and hard, and does not let his gaze drop to Rufus’ fingers. To Rufus’ ring. Rufus always wears it; only of late has he started to fidget with it. With a start, Tseng realizes that the fidget is one of Balthier's habits.

'That particular terminology insults both of us,' Tseng says, considers, and amends: 'all three of us. The reason for expenditure is apparent. Balthier is made to lead, and so I give him a team to lead; no one ever said Bunansas were low maintenance.'

'You’re so giving.' Rufus's smile curls nearly to cruelty. 'You gave me a company to lead too, if I recollect correctly. Are you trying to placate us, Tseng?'

'You want a new source of power, a marketable fuel that is not at all like your father's earth-rape of a production. Balthier may not know fuel, but he knows vehicles; people are just another kind of vehicle to get him where he wants to go.'

'And the trick being in convincing him that where you want him to go is where he wants to be?'

There’s a challenge there, a hint of anger, defensiveness. Tseng is…surprised, to say the least, but Rufus has always been too indulgent with his pets. 'Balthier knows enough about everything that takes place in that lab to understand everyone's conversations. He knows just enough about what's necessary to manage and coordinate subconsultant hiring mechanisms; he has the charisma to befriend half a hundred neurotic scientists and keep them happy. He's keeping the petrochemicals talking to the aeronauticals, the aeronauticals to the chemicals. Better yet, Balthier needs physical results to guarantee him his satisfaction – he wants to see progress. You are far more willing to accept an esoteric conclusion, but he will put the figures on paper and the emission-free airship back into the air.'

‘He’s not happy, Tseng.’

Tseng hesitates. Happiness is a strange aspiration, and stranger to hear such a thing from Rufus.

'I'm going to remind you,' Tseng says, 'that where all your gearing towards brokering for funds has netted you only enough to sustain Shinra, in the few meetings, lunches and, so I hear, film premiers you've sent Balthier off to, he's proven charismatic enough to win you more money that Elena brought in last year alone, and she the most productive of your team. Not failing to mention the scientists he's seduced over from Europe for you.'

'He's an aristocrat,' Rufus says, almost sulkily. Whatever he thinks about his personal charm, he's never has so much success in public realms. 'Bluebloods are bred for social situations.'

'No,' Tseng says, 'the issue is, you want people to do what you want them to do because you know you're right. Balthier's used to making people think along his lines by wearing the role of 'rightness'. He performs, Rufus, exactly in ways you never could, and you need him.'

'Even when he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.'

Tseng almost smiles. 'Especially then. Lost in the dark heart of ignorance, a Bunansa's brilliance flares the brightest.'

-

'But what do you want me to do?' Balthier asks over lunch the first day of his (he almost chokes at the thought) job.

'You fly planes.' Tseng shrugs, purposely vague. 'Make me a fuel more efficient than the current one. A power source, self-contained, at least ninety percent efficient, non-polluting and from renewable and currently existing resources.'

Balthier nearly laughs. 'I fly planes, Tseng, and build classics from scratch, and rather enjoy having seven day weekends. I'm not a petrochemical engineer.'

Tseng merely looks at him, bland, blank, and utterly provocative.

'You mean,' Tseng says, with a distant tone of surprise, 'you can't do it? Oh.' After some consideration Tseng adds, 'you can hire someone to do it, if you like. If you can raise the funding for them.'

Oh, Tseng says. Oh. One little utterance, not even disapproving or vaguely paternal, and Balthier decides he hates the bastard.

For a couple of weeks Balthier regards the mess of scientific process that Tseng handed over with the keys, and amidst a morass of recurring nightmares of his father, latex gloves and the insistence of every scientist that he’s not mad, truly, Balthier nearly runs.

The only reason he doesn't: Tseng is expecting it.

The downside to that, Balthier knows, is that Tseng fucking expects everything. The man is never surprised, and it's beginning to get irritating.

For the next couple of weeks Balthier applies exactly the same skills as he does when trawling New York's downtown, or Soho, or slightly better policed streets in Madrid, and he has his own flock of hand-trained scientists eating of out of his hand, and Richard Branson (in person, Reno hisses, not even his PA!) waiting patiently on line two.

Tseng is distant, and much like God, intervenes in highly obscure ways. The manna of mysterious Ikea catalogues are replaced by plane tickets and a pass to some scratch-the-surface seminar along with a tacky little name badge that Balthier discards in favor of wearing his own particular form of infamy: he is, after all, a Bunansa at a scientist’s conference. He goes to the seminars, meets people, wants to kill every aging professor that tells him he looks like his father, and detests the fact that he's not flying his own planes to close the distance.

He could fly himself, Balthier supposes. Rufus only got his father's companies, not Balthier's personal wealth. But Balthier doesn't. Tseng might order the tickets, but Rufus is the one paying for them.

For a while, gazing into the nothingness that exists in the space over his desk, Balthier imagines rather nostalgically that Tseng sends him into the depth of uselessness that is the seminar world because this is how they met. But Tseng hasn't got a romantic bone in him unless he's currently being boned, and Tseng believes in learning all the time, in lessons.

Balthier develops a strange kind of anticipation for what lesson Tseng could possibly concoct next, and wonders if this is fear.

-

This isn’t new to Balthier, none of this. He tried normality once; it just didn’t come in his size. Sometimes he’s there to shout Tseng his cup of profoundly foul Starbucks in the morning, and sometimes he wakes up to Rufus making an espresso, each bean lovingly birthed into a free trade world. And that’s not the problem, not really.

Why the clothes matter when even the ring didn't, Balthier doesn't know. Self-reflection always disturbs him. He does, unfortunately, look rather too much like his father to find comfort in his own reflection.

Tseng finds him in the bathroom. There’s nowhere else to hide, really. This is Rufus’ city, Rufus’ building, and Balthier’s getting a little too old to run.

‘You know you can work from London,’ Tseng says, like he’s said a thousand times before. Calm, not encouraging, not at all judgemental. His voice echoes.

'He doesn't own me,' Balthier says, just like that. 'It's just a shirt.'

'Like the jeans he bought you.' Tseng nods, just once, not at all mockingly: Balthier flinches regardless. 'I get the impression Rufus likes buying you clothes so you can go and show off your breeding. Blue bloods need their luxuries.'

‘He’s pimping up his hound for a dog show? Tseng, your method of comforting a fellow is somewhat lacking.'

The thing about Tseng is that he's never surprised, but always surprising. The grip at Balthier's nape is hard; the line of Tseng's lips on his, even harder. Not a kiss, a collision. Tseng is hard, hard to crack, hard to know, hard to hold; harder than the tiles that Balthier digs his shoulders into, struggling for grip; Balthier can't hold him; ‘Tseng,’ he breathes, ‘Tseng.’

Tseng slides to his knees despite Balthier's efforts to hold him upright. His fingers rest where the offensive paisley shirt sits loose across Balthiers belt buckle, but only briefly. With innate efficiency, Tseng moves to unzip, unbuckle, unbutton, all in that order, too quickly.

'This should be more your idea of comfort, Bunansa: a blow job in an executive bathroom. Yes, or now?'

Yes, Balthier wants to say, and completely and utterly no; such is the contradiction that is his life that what should be comforting instead comes across as an insult. How Tseng give insult while on his knees is a mystery. Balthier hates that, rocks back, cracks his skull on tile and stares at the ceiling. Mysteries are provocative, and Balthier is too easy to provoke. He knows that.

Tseng stands after and does not wipe his lips. He manhandles Balthier's pants the rest of the way down, handles Balthier with as much easy. The light is unflattering, the mirror too wide; Balthier braces his palms wide on the marble ledge and looks at himself right in the eye. He can't look away. Tseng moves about behind him. He doesn't even take off his shirt, the bastard – but then again, he left Rufus's paisley dog collar on Balthier too. For a moment Balthier hopes, rather vengefully, that come gets all over it.

'You can't use liquid soap for that.' Balthier adds, too honest for his own good: 'At least, not out of a shower.'

'Rather short on showers in here,' Tseng says, soapy palms cupped under a trickle of water, 'though with a startling surplus of liquid soap.'

'You are aware we're in a toilet. In Rufus's building. In Rufus’ bathroom. And you’re going to fuck me.' Tiles are too slick to give him a grip, however sweaty his palms suddenly are. Tseng…doesn’t do things like this, and Balthier doesn’t let himself get fucked in bathrooms, no matter how executive the bathroom or the bastard.

'Why,' Tseng says, cool, 'yes, I think I was aware of that. On the other hand,’ he reaches with a slick hand, ‘you're aware that you’re sulking in a toilet because a man gave you a shirt? I would have thought the ring would have set you off, not a shirt.'

More than a shirt, Balthier wants to say; everything with Shinra is symbolic, a euphemism, the shirt is a euphemism, Tseng is a euphemism; this fuck is a euphemism, however painful; everything about Shinra is about power.

Liquid soap, even lathered, even wet, proves entirely inappropriate for such a purpose. Balthier can't look away from the contortion of his face in the mirror. His knuckles are white.

'I have lots of rings,' Balthier says, tries, needs to breathe, 'you can stick my fingers wherever you want if it makes you happy, it’s just jewellery. But I'm rather particular about what goes on my back. A man is what his clothes make of him. The last person to buy me clothes was my father, and I was fourteen.'

‘I’ve bought you shirts.’

Balthier wants to laugh. ‘You never expected me to wear them.’

'Listen,' Tseng says, when he can speak again, 'you're just an employee here. I’ve said it before: work from London, if you want, go sit in your centuries-old castle and cradle your ghosts close. Or stay here. Get your own place, what's it matter? I trust you to do what's right; Rufus knows he's right; Rufus trusts me to make sure that your course of rightness will be equally as right. But I trust you to know that already.'

'An interesting dilemma,' Balthier strains, 'circuitous.' His hipbone is bruising to bloodiness on the edge of the basin; he has to push back, though he vaguely doesn't want to give Tseng that satisfaction. Tseng's breath quickens, the echo of a stifled groan sounds. Balthier adds: 'One of your own making.'

'I do finance,' Tseng says. His fingers bite at Balthier's waist, hungry and hard, so hard. Only on the last few strokes does Tseng's voice waver. 'You're the PR guy. You go forth, and find the solutions.'

Being left to clean up the mess is nothing new to Balthier. The fact that it's not even his father's mess, not his family's fuck-ups, it's all Rufus's daddy's little problem – that's what bites hard enough to bruise.

Balthier flushes the wreck of a condom. He probably shouldn't. The water pressure is hellish on this side of the world; it’ll come back to haunt someone, he’s sure of it.

-

Back at his desk Balthier finds a post-it in the middle of his monitor, with little lovehearts over all the 'I's. _Hey, I think I kind of did something to the boss's car, pls fix? ♥ forever, Reno._

Underneath it is another, _p.s, you got any convenient solvents for spray paint in your lab that won't eat into a car because otherwise Tseng's going to fire me._

After a long moment staring at the great nothingness between his desk and the sky, Balthier stands up, tucks in his shirt, and opens his inbox.

.

The discussion (argument) over the Friday lunch menu unfurls in a manner Tseng is entirely familiar with. Elena, first in with the no-carb demands; Reno with the instant rebuff of 'how will I ever put on weight without carbs?' Intriguingly, this is the point where Balthier decides he fits: he airs, in tones of high culture and particular injury, his hurt that he wasn't asked for his input, and that he is decidedly and unpleasantly lactose intolerant. When the argument has very nearly simmered itself out, Rude speaks one beautiful word that sets them all off again:

"Vegan."

Tseng likes Rude's efficiency, always has. The man can do with one word what took Balthier half a collapsed global conglomerate to do.

Tseng remembers the old administration. Rufus's father. Every Friday they would go for a lunch that was a test of gluttony and willpower. How rich we are, that lunch said: look at how much we can waste. Excess taken to such an extreme is very nearly a punishment, a form of hell all of its own. Tseng remembers the buckets and buckets of deep fried chicken. The seven pizzas. The tankards of beer, the countless bottles of Coke. The cheesecakes, the éclairs, the steak-and-chips; the lonely salad ignored. Lobster; scallops; mussels. All of it. Tseng remembers Palmer's greasy gobbling, remembers Scarlet with meat fragments smeared all over her face, remembers Hojo barely able to see through the fog of his own sweat-shined glasses, remembers Rufus's father with his straining gut and strained control. Veld never partook. He sent Tseng in his stead. Tseng learned a lot about what excess truly said about a man from those business lunches; however Balthier might think himself a man of excesses, he's a moderate liberal in comparison to the generation gone.

Tseng looks around the table. Elena's crisp bob and crisper process. Reno's quick eyes and quicker mind. Rude's endless, unshakable steadiness. Balthier's shine (Tseng bites back his smirk) and Balthier's smile. These, Tseng thinks, are the new movers of the world: lean with scarcity, hungry enough to pounce.

The waitress clears her throat.

"I think we're done," Rufus growls. "A tub of yoghurt, is what it sounds like."

"Ahem." Balthier leans back to set his ankle to his knee and looks pointedly over the tops of his amber-tinted sunglasses.

Rufus bought him that shirt as provocation, Tseng knows, a test Balthier recognized even if Rufus didn't quite understand the depths of challenge proposed. Only Balthier would rise to such a challenge, and in such a way: with the addition of white pants, snakeskin boots, those sunglasses and the creamy satin scarf, there solely to offset the unbuttoned collar of a chance-bought paisley peacemaker. Balthier looks like a porn star, and no doubt entirely by design; it was amusing watching Rufus swallow his own tongue when Balthier walked in that morning. Such games these rich boys can play.

"Lactose," Balthier says, "intolerant."

"I," Rufus says, "am entirely fed up with the idea of tolerance."

"Six glasses of water," Tseng cuts across the resurgent argument. "And whatever the chef's special is."

In the relative silence, Tseng leans back in his chair and lets the warmth of the sun filter through his skin. The sound of nearby traffic isn't annoying. Tseng's a city man. Cars are white noise; they converse with ease over the top of it. The sunshine is rare in the depth of the city. They try to enjoy it for as long as it lasts; only as long as the meal.

The crew breaks up and filters away in bits and pieces, slowly, Rude and Reno to find something more interesting to do on a Friday afternoon, Balthier and Elena caught in a strange conversation about the degradation of workmanship found in leather wear. Rufus leaves to pace his city, alone, as he always does.

Tseng waits for as long as he can. His solitude is rare now, and to be appreciated. Paying the bill at the counter, he can just see outside. Cars might be white noise; brats certainly are not. "Mummy," a sexless blonde child yells, flailing with significant effort, "mommy, mommy, I want you to buy it, mommy, mommy--!"

The mother is thin with the air of someone who tries very hard to be thin in defiance of what her genetics would make of her. She can't seem to push her child into the car, though she's trying with both hands and, Tseng notes, one foot.

"I bought you a cappuccino," the woman cries, "in this city, I found you a cappuccino! And I bought you a muffin, remember? Just before we went and bought you your new runners. I'm not buying you any more."

"Mummy, the cappuccino had no froth and the muffin was stale! I want i--"

"Get in the car!"

The blonde child has no compunction against using its teeth. The woman screams; the child wails; boundaries are broken and redefined; the city continues. Tseng collects the receipt. Her mistake in this circumstance is in even bothering to engage in conversation. He doesn’t make the mistake of trying to tell her.

-

Tseng changes his lock twice, each time with a slightly more complex model, before he decides this particular ground he has to cede. Balthier can pick through any a lock, and why a son of old aristocracy can do that Tseng doesn’t want to know. History is a corpse, better buried.

‘I don’t live with you,’ Tseng tells Balthier, once, as close to angry as he gets, ‘you don’t live with me, nor do I live with Rufus. I live here by myself, Balthier, and experience should indicate that I only allow either one of you to be in my apartment at varied, long intervals, and through all of that it never once occurred to you that a man who lives like that like that dislikes the invasion of his privacy?’

In the end Tseng solves the problem by giving Balthier a key. Balthier never comes over uninvited again. Tseng believes in working with a man’s strengths, knowing all of his weaknesses, and giving away nothing for free.

At the core of it, Balthier is a man of excess where Tseng is a man of privation. The difference between them is that while Balthier fails to ever adopt Tseng's habits, Tseng knows full well the advantages of indulgence. Hold a man back long enough and his first free steps will always be sweet; little surprise then that Balthier finds his freedom less than satisfying after such a surplus.

It’s been months. Tseng is still surprised when he wakes to find Balthier there, when he turns to find a steady gaze regarding him, his coffee already made in the morning.

‘A man of excess.’ Balthier’s lip curls at that thought, almost a smile, as he stares into the steam of his coffee. ‘But I never add sugar, you know.’

‘Excess versus privation,’ Tseng elaborates. ‘You are hardly a man of privation.’

‘And Rufus, Tseng? Where does Rufus fit, then?’

Above us, Tseng almost says. ‘Rufus makes of privation a form of excess. His is a history of excess; even inversion is a kind of indulgence, I suspect.’

Tseng feels more than most when he touches people; he touches so rarely that every ripple of texture, the tightness of a nipple against the air, the pimpling of skin with sensation, all of that speaks to his fingertips; he knows more than most about touch. He will not and cannot afford the blunt strength of Balthier's nails digging into his back, to excess, as the man would have it happen. Each time between them is twisted with the urgency of how it used to be, with half a world between them and only half a night to claim.

Tseng finds it perfectly acceptable on those few and sparse occasions, then, to blend practicality with pleasure when he uses the tie he wears for Rufus for other, more personal ends.

-

It’s long, long after everyone should have gone home. Tseng hasn’t gone home. Rufus hasn’t. Balthier surprises himself when he stays, half-formed intent itching at the edge of his brain. He thinks it’s Friday. The days blur when he has to live like this, the same horizon every day, the same desk, the same space looming like ruin impendent.

If he couldn’t open the windows up here, he thinks he would have snapped weeks ago; even a city breeze in his hair gives sanity. His office is high, and there are higher, but every fall ends the same way.

Tseng never idles; he always walks with intent. He stops when he sees Balthier, quirks an eyebrow, and shifts his direction to push open Rufus’ door. ‘If you’re waiting to drag Rufus off for something else mindless and debilitating, the meeting finished about fifteen minutes ago. He’s just in the bathroom.’

Balthier rocks back in his chair and sets his snakeskin boots on Rufus' desk. The costume game is rather fun, if he can forget the stakes if he loses. (You look ridiculous, Rufus said, earlier that day, with laughter on his lips; but you know what, Balthier replied, not pointing out that the shirt was Rufus' idea of taste, or an insult, I'm still going to fuck you tonight.)

‘You must always assume the worst of me, Tseng. Maybe I’m here to make up for an overly long lunch break. Or something.’

'I don't mind,' Tseng says, 'if you're out cruising with Reno for half a day or if you go shopping for thigh high boots with Elena, I really don't.'

'Which explains,' Balthier says, 'why you came over here presumably for the purpose of talking about how my work ethic really doesn't bother you.'

'I care about the work,' Tseng replies. 'I care about the work ethic. What I don't care about is the hours you work.'

'Good.' Balthier stretches back, for effect. 'I'm amazingly efficient, you know. A whole day's worth of work gets done in about three hours from what I can tell.'

'...have you ever been curious to see what you could achieve if you actually worked for a whole day?'

Balthier sets his boots back on the floor and considers Tseng's blandness. "Do you really want me to rule the world?"

'I don't,' Tseng smiles then, 'because I know you can't do it.'

"That sounds somewhat like a challenge."

Tseng raises an eyebrow to that. 'Oh, you and your rising to challenges. Ruling the world doesn't require snakeskin boots or paisley shirts.'

'First blows,' Balthier says, and shrugs. 'You can't tell the outcome of a battle from the first blood.'

'Oh, you'd enjoy it,' Tseng muses, 'the challenge, the idea of taking the world, to rule. And then, when you're done and when everything's yours, you'll get bored with it in exactly the way Rufus won't.'

It doesn't need to be said where Tseng'll be then. Balthier feels his smile turn brittle.

"Your idea of integrity," Balthier says, "is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen since the day my father spread his arms to the sky and told us all he could fly."

'There's nothing wrong with my idea of integrity.' Tseng leans forward. "Did he fly?"

"Well, for about three seconds. He jumped. He didn't fall. He certainly believed he could fly."

"You Bunansas," Tseng says, "are men of total conviction."

'With so many fairy tales out there, the difficulty is in finding something to believe in.'

Tseng very nearly looks triumphant. 'Men like Rufus don't look for something to believe in.'

'No,' Balthier says, 'men like Rufus create reasons and belief both. And that is what terrifies me about him. Men are not gods; belief in flesh-and-blood fallibility is dangerous. Half the office talks about him like he's some kind of demi-god; the other half would kill you if you said he wasn't. The white blinds them to the pink. If they could see him like I do…'

Tseng smiles, not quite sympathetically. 'Men are want to believe in something, Balthier; better another man, or an impossible ideal?’

Balthier shrugs. ‘Isn’t Rufus one and the same?’

‘I'm going home, Balthier. Let someone know if you're going to be late in tomorrow. Rufus has a meeting at ten.'

When Tseng leaves, he closes the door to the office behind him.

Balthier waits in that soundproofed little bubble of Rufus' office until Rufus gets back from his bathroom. The rest of the office is grey with secondary lighting, shadows of cleaners moving about soundlessly. Behind him, the city turns into a night sky to outshine nature’s own creation.

'Balthier.' Rufus's smiles are as unexpected as Tseng's kisses, but much brighter.

'Rufus,' Balthier says. He stands, moves to meet Rufus halfway. 'We need to talk.'

'Ok.' Rufus’ color is high, his breath fast to match. 'But first, you need to get that horrific shirt off right now, and, you know, all the rest of it while you’re at it.'

Rufus touches exactly as Tseng doesn’t, as though the paths his fingers map are new, every time. They don’t kiss; they need to be drunk for that. When they recline, the desk is large enough to hide them.

Even over their soft exertion, Rufus smells rather strongly of liquid soap.


	3. Some Futures Only Ever Fade To Black

_Much Earlier_

The thumping, whirring acoustic mess of the company helicopter recedes into the distance after it deposits Rufus, freshly returned from his first semester of out-of-state exile in Chicago, on the roof of the Shinra Building. His feet hit the helipad, and Rufus spends one glorious moment looking down on the rest of the world. New York rears up to meet him, welcoming, but there is someone else there waiting as well.

'How are you enjoying college in Chicago, Rufus?' his father asks against the buffeting winds.

Rufus slides a hand through his travel-mussed hair. 'Immensely,' he smiles broadly. Some families lie compulsively; others, chronically. Rufus and his father have been lying to each other for so long that neither of them bothers to search for truth any more, only advantage. It's a game. Who dares be the most outrageous?

'I'm glad you're home,' his father says, laying his arm across the line of Rufus' broadening shoulders.

Rufus smile widens. 'So am I.' Rufus hefts his bag up with his free arm, and they walk.

'You'll be busy this holiday,' his father informs him as they ride down in the elevator. They don't look at each other, or at the reflections in the doors in front of them. Rufus tracks the floor indicator numbers as they change: R. 62. 61. 60. His father counts other things, such as the score between them: 'I'll have you acquainting yourself with the board members, attending some of the meetings...'

'Of course,' Rufus agrees, with wholehearted sincerity. 'It'd be a crying shame to the family if I let my title become nothing more than words on a piece of paper, wouldn't it?'

His father chuckles, genuinely amused. 'Rufus,' he says with immense fondness. 'You're so young. But you're doing good enough a job with the Chicago offices that any of our people would be crazy to criticise you.' He pats Rufus on the shoulder; his fingers are leathery and warm and long as they slide off the rich fabric.

'If you're telling me that no one's been baying for my blood as I sit in a college classroom voiding one of the vice-presidential positions, then I'm afraid I'll have to call you a liar, father,' Rufus says jovially. He turns his body, half-bows, curls his mouth, shifts his weight onto the back of his feet. Rufus hums. 'I'm certain that everyone in Shinra would like to see power consolidated here in New York instead of scattered across the states.'

'There's been no one, Rufus, who's asked for anything.' His father claps him on the back, earnest and hard enough that it almost hurts. Rufus moves with the motion. 'Stupid men don't become executives.'

Rufus gives him a sidelong gaze. 'If only that were so.' He blinks, guileless. 'It'd make things so much easier for you, wouldn't it?'

'No,' his father tells him, with a little shake of his head. 'A little stupidity in the machine never hurt anyone. It's the clever people you have to be wary of. Clever people don't ask for what they want.'

'How fortunate that you have Veld to do your questioning for you,' Rufus murmurs, taking his gaze away.

'He's an efficient and loyal Director par none,' his father smiles. 'Rufus, Rufus, son. Do say hello to Tseng for me when you see him.'

The elevator pings. Saved by the bell, their conversation ends. The reins of history, as Balthier might call it, are and have always been placed very firmly in the hands of one man in Shinra. The surname doesn't suffer plurality, only progeny; history is reigned over like men rule over their sons. Like all royalty, Rufus' father understands better than most men how to delegate enough to do no work while ruling enough to broker no mutiny.

-

Rufus gives his father a grace period of two days, the first of which he spends sleeping off jet-lag and walking up and down well-loved city blocks breathing in free air, and the second of which he starts off at five in the morning. He doesn't call a car even though his destination is halfway across Manhattan; the twenty minute ride on the near-empty subway is far more enjoyable than a chauffeured slide down Chicago streets, and cars in Manhattan don't slide, they stutter and bark back at the taxis and growl at all the pedestrians.

After reaching his destination, Rufus spends ten minutes standing at the base of a stairwell, his eyes fixed on the face of his watch. The minute hand barely grazes past the five-thirty mark when he hears footsteps coming down towards him. Rufus has the element of surprise. Tseng's back hits the wall, and with his breath knocked out Rufus has the time to press inwards, searching and finally fucking finding after six months of hell and bone-deep anticipation. Seeing Tseng makes Rufus want to swear; strong and filthy and childishly. He wants to be so angry at this man with his unbreakable routine, his unbreakable fucking heart which makes Rufus feel, by comparison, more badly defended than he's ever felt in his father's presence.

Tseng's fingers fist in the centre of his back, bunching fabric and yanking back, advocating control. Rufus responds by grabbing the shoulders of Tseng's jogging shirt and pulling him down hard enough that their teeth snap against each other before they manage to realign, breath mixing and covering up any words. Tseng knuckles the line of Rufus' spine, bumping bone over bone slow enough that he could be counting each vertebrae, numbering them off as he goes.

Eventually they both give in, feet knocking against the steps as Tseng gropes his way to his door while Rufus asks, demands, 'No more waiting.' They tumble inside and it's lucky chance that Tseng honestly has so little in his house that breaking things is a probabilistic uncertainty. Tseng makes an angry noise when Rufus shoves him, unceremoniously, against a low cupboard. 'My knee,' he hisses, but Rufus snaps at his jaw and neck and shrugs it off. Rufus ends up fucking Tseng against a wall, uncomfortably, until they slide down in a mess of half-discarded clothes and Tseng's distant commentary on the importance of condoms and safe sex, both of which, he points out, Rufus has ignored.

Rufus laughs into Tseng's face at that, quite literally. He hasn't moved off yet. 'Don't you trust me?' he asks the plane of Tseng's cheek. This close he can smell the slightest whiff of aftershave.

'The point is about best practices,' Tseng counters, glancing up at the ceiling. His face is placid, even though Tseng is flushed. He could have been thinking about the weather; Rufus might as well be a passing storm raging past, a flush of changing pressures that will, eventually, pare out and equalise. Rufus opens his mouth to say something - how the hell did we get here? - but then he thinks better of it, and shuts his mouth. If Tseng wants equilibrium he'll find it. He works by market forces, after all, and perfect competition. Rufus is content enough knowing that he is Tseng's next-best-alternative; that if there's a way Tseng can do better Tseng hasn't found it yet, and is unlikely to. The Shinra heir, away from home three quarters of the year. There's enough freedom in that for him to choke just thinking about it.

Rufus rolls off to unbutton his cuffs properly, stripping out of the rest of his barely-undone shirt. 'Get up,' he says, kneeling only slightly shakily. 'We might as well let you go on your run. We can talk about best practices going through Central Park.'

Tseng stays where he is long enough to glance up at Rufus, his eyes hooded. 'Welcome home.'

There is a quarter-moment of stillness, here and across the whole damn city.

Then Rufus gives Tseng a hand up. 'How far are you running?'

Tseng gives Rufus an appraising look, taking in the paleness that is Rufus' unchanging trademark. He doesn't laugh aloud – he doesn't even say anything – but then again, he doesn't need to. Rufus frowns. 'Treadmills are indoors, Tseng, and trust me when I say that I've had very little to keep me occupied and distracted in Chicago other than running mindlessly while not actually going anywhere.'

'Quaint metaphor,' Tseng comments with a half-smile. 'I usually run 10. Should I cut down?'

Rufus snorts. 'I'll keep up.'

-

Rufus is laying down, his back on the grass of Sheep's Meadow, and sucking contemplatively on his water bottle when Tseng finally circles back. He doesn't even wait for Tseng to speak. 'I kept up. You said you'd run 10,' Rufus accuses, half-heartedly. His legs still hurt too much.

'Usually,' Tseng replies, with the infinite grace of someone who has a point to make after being screwed in his own living room. Rufus makes a note, not particularly for the first time, that Tseng only likes surprises when he's the one doing the delivery.

'Ha,' Rufus says, letting his eyes slide shut as Tseng takes a seat next to him, breathing neatly. 'You must have gone, what, 15? More?'

Tseng glances at his watch. 'Thereabouts,' he agrees whimsically, fixing his eyes on the rising sun as he waits for his circulation to slow. 'You made an admirable effort.'

'Call it part of my efforts to follow my father's advice and keep on par with "clever men",' Rufus says lazily, pushing his arms above his head in a stretch. He considers if Tseng is thinking about how only rich boys lay down on grass with white shirts on. It doesn't matter one way or another: the shirt he's wearing is Tseng's, and Tseng probably does unto grass stains what he does unto all the other obstacles in his life. 'I'll dry clean this for you, if you're so worried,' he reassures Tseng, plucking at his borrowed shirt. Tseng makes a vaguely satisfied noise.

Contentment is the sun coming up on a new day. Rufus lets ideas write themselves on the back of his eyelids, riding a wave of contentment and old resentment. 'Oh,' he adds, almost as an afterthought, triggered to speak only when Tseng moves to take the water bottle from him. 'My father says to say hello.'

-

On the third day, Rufus walks in ten minutes early – and uninvited – on his father's boardroom meeting, takes his seat at the right hand of the table with an austere blink of the eyes and seals his entrance with a note of arrogant finality by placing his document folder square centre in front of him. The air conditioning gushes loudly down into the space created by the general astonishment of everyone present. His father glances steadily at him while the rest of the half-empty room tries its hardest not to stare. 'Rufus,' the elder Shinra says in the modulated tones of a good father. 'I wasn't aware that you were attending today.'

'I didn't think I needed to ask, father.' Rufus shuffles his blank papers around and around. 'I thought I'd simply be proactive. Unless, of course, I'm intruding?' He half-stands with a focused look of concern on his face.

'Not at all,' he father says, expansively. 'Be my guest.'

'If you don't mind,' Rufus nods in return, sliding back into his chair. He can feel his father watching him, quietly and without any outward expression. Rufus turns in his seat and extends a hand to the man nearest to him. His memory warms to the challenge of long disassociation. 'Mr Tuesti,' Rufus greets, the name flickering to his tongue. 'It's been years.'

Tseng (three down, one across) catches Veld's eye long before Rufus bothers to come pay him half a minute's worth of attention. Veld just leans back in his chair, perching his elbows on the armrests while a bland expression settles across his face. 'Sir,' Tseng says, voice flat, when Rufus comes around to shake his hand.

'Tseng,' Rufus says, as warm as the fires of hell. 'Always a pleasure to see someone closer to my generation.'

Their handshake is a tug of war. Tseng wins, though perhaps the Vice President simply lets him. Against the shell of Rufus' ear, he says, 'What do you think you are doing?'

Rufus furrows his brow in a show of thought. 'Flirting? Don't ask me with whom – or what – you should know better than that.' He lets go of Tseng's hand and moves on to smile at Mr. Duesericus, who's placid glance is filled with enough hate that it's almost obvious that Veld has to hide a grunt of amusement behind a well-timed cough. Rufus circumvents the table before returning to his place, where he watches with undisguised pleasure and a corner of his lips half-quirked as Scarlet and Heidegger walk in late to see the prodigal son returned.

Rufus does the crossword from the Times during Reeve's proposal for some sort of new, ground-breaking infrastructure. He watches as eyes constantly drift away from the beautifully wasted effort of Reeve's projected powerpoint presentation and towards him. The stuff on screen is too technical for the general board: it lacks any kind of sell, there's no usable ammunition there in Reeve's absolutely transparent financial demands. He is, Rufus surmises, irritatingly honest. In any case, the President's already signed off on the project, so the only reason someone like Palmer might be interested even listening would be because Reeve may need someone else to take on the burden of cutting red tape and reaping all the glory. Rufus spends a while postulating theories about why Reeve tries so hard to remain so unknown in between filling in the blanks of his puzzle with URBAN (5 across) DEVELOPMENT (10 down), TUESTI ("a friend in need is a friend ______") and PROGRESSIVE (4 down), BUDGETING ("the root of all evil"), 192M ("the year the music died").

When the attention he's receiving becomes non-productive – long before the meeting's scheduled to end – Rufus quietly switches his Blackberry to ring, and is delighted to receive a call from Strife's Pizzas a mere three minutes later announcing that his order (placed 53 minutes ago! Strife Pizzas promises a free meal for every delivery that comes in over the 1 hour mark!) has been delivered and would he please come pick it up?

Everyone stops to look at him.

'I'm sorry,' Rufus says to the room, pressing his phone to his chest. 'Business from Chicago.' He heads outside to take the call, but his words are carelessly dropped en route. 'Yes. Those were the specifications. I'll call someone to make the monetary arrangements, and be right down afterwards. Thank you.'

Rufus hangs up a moment later on the vaguely bewildered pizza boy on the other end of the line, then stalls in the corridor for a few good minutes before he cracks the door to the boardroom open again. 'You'll have to excuse me,' he apologises to the meeting at large before adding to his father, 'I'll borrow Tseng, if you don't mind? I'm afraid I won't be back for the day, and administrative research is hard to conduct over telephone lines.' His words are pointedly iron-clad in reason, logic and his father's double-bladed insistence that he know everything about what goes on in Rufus' life.

His father looks at Veld, who shrugs. Let the young be the young. 'By all means,' the elder Shinra says. Tseng pushes himself away from the conference table. Rufus exits with panache after Tseng brushes past him, and closes the door with quiet, controlled exactitude behind them both. Tseng follows him down two corridors without word or objection before he points out, neutrally, 'You're not due anywhere else for at least an hour, Rufus.'

'I know,' Rufus says. He's far better at layering now than he was before, both his clothes (Chicago is so fucking windy) and his voice (his father so fucking adroit), but he knows more than suspects that Tseng's able to read between the lines of diffidence. Humour is the last of Rufus' childhood traits, carefully preserved alongside the boyish arrogance that is now being carved, perforce, into something more arch.

Tseng says only, 'There could have been important things said in that room.' His voice isn't tight, but it's a point of pride for Tseng not to deliver on the emotional expectations required of the rest of humanity. Anger is too debasing.

'Yes,' Rufus agrees with him as they enter the elevator. 'But I prefer to see my father angry than listen to details of his budget. And now there's lunch waiting at the front desk, and I'd rather not let it go cold.' Tseng's accompanying silence stinks of insult. Rufus turns to him, posture loose and voice objective. 'There are more important things than what will be said in that room, Tseng,' he says. 'Like what's said between us, and what, in turn, you'll say to Veld. My father--'

Tseng fixes Rufus with flat eyes. 'Do I look like I enjoy being used as your conduit, Rufus?'

Rufus doesn't look away. 'Did either of us ever assume that our work would be enjoyable?'

'Less than seventy-two hours back,' Tseng muses lightly, 'and you and I are already failing once more to communicate.'

'Now you sound disappointed rather than angry,' Rufus sighs, deferring. 'I wouldn't want to let down the family name by becoming abruptly forthright. You know that they'll gossip about what I just did. It's one of this company's most useful tools, the grapevine. If it didn't exist, my father would possibly have had to invent it. Otherwise what would he have you and the rest of Administrative Research police? If everyone in this company weren't paranoid with greed the whole of Shinra'd cease to operate.'

The elevator pings their arrival on the ground floor. Tseng doesn't bother to move out of Rufus' path when he exits the elevator, so Rufus steps backwards instead, unyielding. 'I am not a commodity, Rufus,' Tseng states, bearing down on him before his sense of propriety catches up, and he stops. 'I am not bought or bartered as part of your unarticulated plans for the future.'

'I always have difficulty accepting voluntary co-operation.' Rufus stands his ground. He's peripherally aware of the people around them who are taking note but trying not to stare. 'It's something my father would suspect. Some plans aren't meant for articulation. Or up for negotiation.'

'Oh,' Tseng nods, curt and savage. 'I see.'

'And for now,' Rufus adds, 'for now, you are a commodity.' He ignores the look Tseng gives him; some truths are harder than others but Chicago is teaching him how to deal. 'Shinra bought you with a scholarship and bartered you into its most illegal and unethical department and now Veld uses you as part of his unarticulated plans for whatever future he has planned.' Rufus knows exactly how he feels when he angers his father on purpose, that bone-deep satisfaction that vibrates through him. Angering Tseng is an entirely different matter. 'You're Shinra's in every way that could matter, even to you. Legally. Morally. Financially – you are ours, Tseng.' Rufus wants to touch Tseng so badly right now that he's glad that they're out in the open main lobby with the everyday men that Shinra salaries swirling about them like leaves in a gale. 'You are ours,' Rufus repeats, a promise in his voice. 'But that can change, and it will change. Let it.'

Tseng looks down at him. 'And like all good slaves, Rufus, I'd prefer to buy my own freedom instead of letting other men buy it for me. That isn't any more change than it is a transferral of power.' He cocks an eyebrow.

'I couldn't afford your price,' Rufus shrugs urbanely. 'I'm only pointing out that, with our arrangement, I'm very good leverage. I personally think you can do better than helping Administrative Research funnel money out of legitimate projects and into whatever alternative interests my father's choosing to engage. One way or another,' Rufus goes on before Tseng can interrupt. 'Things are going to change.'

Tseng says, 'Yes, I think they might.' He steps back from Rufus.

Rufus smiles, without censor. He doesn't ask himself if Tseng says what he means, or if that was only meant to placate him – it doesn't seem to matter so much anymore, how Tseng feels. 'Good.' Rufus gestures with his hand at the pizza boy in the lobby standing lost in the centre of a huge waiting area, clutching his delivery. 'Lunch?' he asks Tseng, arch. He feels pared down and hungry in a number of different ways, for a number of different things. 'We can go Dutch.'

'Did you order deep dish?' Tseng says, sounding genuinely amused as he draws out his wallet.

'Ha,' Rufus snorts softly, summoning the pizza boy over. 'As though I care enough about Chicago to actually miss it.'

-

Tseng doesn't go with him when Rufus leaves the office later that day. It's turning seven in the evening, the city slowly flickering into darkness and artificial lighting, but the order of business in Administrative Research never quite stops. Rufus drops by before he goes, rapping his knuckles against the door to Tseng's office. 'Come in,' Tseng calls from inside. Rufus turns the knob, only vaguely aware of the fact that he doesn't have a real purpose for being there. Tseng looks up at him from his table. He looks good, jacket off and shirtsleeves rolled up. Tseng doesn't wear the weariness of the day the way most people do; he draws the hours out better. Shinra teaches men like him that it's a very fine line between work and pleasure; work in Shinra is never done. There's no difference between your life in the office, or out of it.

'Am I interrupting?' Rufus comes in and shuts the door behind him.

'No,' Tseng says, finishing something on his screen before he looks up, expectant. 'Yes?'

Rufus tries something. Resting against the door, he asks, 'Would you believe me if I said I were here for no reason?'

Tseng doesn't take time to consider. 'Not precisely.' His eyes flicker to his office window, glancing out at the lounge and the other offices beyond. 'This morning's meeting was for show, so inductively speaking it's more than likely that you're here to make another statement.'

'If Veld doesn't know about this,' Rufus nods at Tseng and himself, 'then I'm probably giving him too much credit. And if I wanted to "make another statement", I'd do a lot better pushing you up against the door of my father's office than I would by coming down here to talk to you.'

'You could have called if you wanted to talk to me "for no reason",' Tseng points out so calmly that Rufus feels honestly angry at him.

'I spend hours in Chicago hating the use of my phone,' Rufus says, evenly. There's no better way to learn how to compartmentalise than at the knees of a master.

'It's convenient,' Tseng shrugs. 'Discreet.'

'Impersonal,' Rufus adds, ironic. 'Which defeats the purpose, I think.'

Tseng leans his elbows on his desk. 'But you have "no purpose" in being here, Rufus, by your own admission.'

Rufus laughs. 'I walked into that one.' He twists his shoulders into a shrug and puts his hand back onto the door handle. 'I cede to your logic.'

'Rufus,' Tseng says, rising out of his chair. Rufus stops, but does not turn.

'Regardless of how I feel about what Shinra does with the money made in this department,' Tseng says, a hand on his desk, 'I am very good at my job, and I intend to keep doing it.'

'Veld's done well by you,' Rufus says to the door. 'And my father, too.' They both know exactly what it is that Shinra does with the financial instruments that filter in and out of Administrative Research. This department doesn't care much about bandying words or pontificating over the trappings of capitalism and empire: they're too busy with channelling and outsourcing Mako, dealing with Hojo's research and running weaponry back and forth across state and international lines. Rufus' lips harden into a line. 'If you don't disregard how you feel, Tseng, and if you don't want to do business the way my father's always done, then you change it. Remove the old guard, put in the new.' His fingers curl around the door knob. 'Don't stall, Tseng.'

Tseng makes a noise of frustration. 'I'm only so important, Rufus, and I've no desire to oust directorship from anyone.'

Rufus lets go and turns. 'How fortunate that I don't share your sentiments for old mentors,' he says, his voice low. He can see that Tseng isn't sure if that's one of his usual complaints against his father or a threat.

Tseng comes around the table. 'I'm only so important,' he repeats to Rufus, as if he's talking a man down. 'My position isn't built along the scale of what you're trying to achieve.' He pauses. 'For now.' Tseng darts a glance out of his office window. No one's around. Rufus' eyes flicker. His mouth is dry. Tseng reaches past him to open the door. 'Where are you going?' Rufus asks.

Tseng leads him down a corridor. 'I'm opposed to pushing you up against your father's office door,' he shrugs, heading them both into one of the executive single bathrooms and turning the lock behind them. 'But there are alternatives.' Rufus' back hits the full-body mirror on the far wall the same time Tseng's fingers find the buckle of his belt.

The lighting in the bathroom is harsh and bright. Rufus watches Tseng work the leather past his hips. 'It would've been more private upstairs,' he breathes, canting forward when Tseng slides a hand up along the flat of his stomach, then down between his legs.

'We're going to fuck in a Shinra bathroom,' Tseng says, roughly, his hand moving rhythmically. He listens to Rufus' breath catch. 'It's never going to be private.' He presses in to kiss Rufus, lips first before they both give up on the pretence of anything sophisticated or gentle. Tseng traces his free hand along the ridge of Rufus' jaw, thumbing the edge of Rufus' mouth while he works his tongue in, tracing the roof of Rufus' palate in flat strokes until they both gag from a lack of oxygen. 'Turn,' he orders.

Rufus shifts, turning his front to the mirror. He rests his forehead against the glass, looking into his own reflection for a moment while Tseng strips him. He can hear Tseng pumping out liquid soap and a brief rush of running water before he feels wet slick trickle down between his legs. 'Bad lubrication,' Rufus grunts when Tseng slides a finger up into him, pushing past resisting muscle with not much finesse. 'And no condom. What happened to safe sex practices?'

'I don't think they apply to us,' Tseng replies, cool and focused and shoving another finger in. Rufus has to slam a palm up against the mirror to keep his balance. His knees threaten to buckle. Tseng shoves him up further, bracing him with one forearm splayed across his shoulder blades. The mirror is cold against Rufus' stomach, his dick. Tseng wrenches his fingers as far apart as he can, leaving Rufus gasping. His breath leaves condensation on the glass.

'Between yesterday and today we've had more sex than we had in the last six months,' Rufus laughs, his words broken up. He can feel Tseng's other fingers gathering up the soap that's beginning to trickle down, lathering it and shoving it back upwards into him. 'And between the times we've had sex we've done nothing but argue. Fuck,' he swears when Tseng pushes in a third finger. 'Too much,' he grits out.

'Not enough,' Tseng counters, not withdrawing. Rufus can feel the stretch, every knuckle of every digit. His eyes in his reflection are dark.

'Not enough what?' Rufus asks, reaching over his shoulder to scrabble at Tseng's throat. He eventually finds Tseng's tie, and yanks. It brings Tseng's mouth close enough to kiss. 'Not enough sex, not enough arguments, not enough plans, not enough time – not enough fucking soap, Tseng, it –'

'Growing pains, Rufus,' Tseng replies, spreading his fingers and then pushing them deeper.

'Clever,' Rufus manages in between gulps of air.

Tseng pulls out, leaving Rufus feeling desperately empty. He reaches his hand around to palm Rufus, leaving streak marks everywhere. 'You're going to want to change later,' he advises.

'Dirty hands,' Rufus agrees, arching backwards. 'But right now I don't care.' He winds the fabric of Tseng's tie around his fist. 'I didn't come down here to fight.' Tseng lays his free hand side by side the one that Rufus has splayed on the edge of the mirror. Their fingers almost touch. Rufus can't keep his eyes off their reflection. He maps the now-familiar sounds of Tseng's breathing to the tightness in Tseng's jaw, the focus. He watches Tseng's eyes when Tseng stops jerking him off to fuck him, the first time in so goddamned long. Rufus holds a groan in his throat, letting it out in a slow, incrementally loud hiss. 'How many of you are left in the office?'

'Enough that they'll hear you if you make too much noise,' Tseng snarls quietly, biting at Rufus' ear.

'We do this on a bed at least once before I leave,' Rufus pants, his fingers locking uncomfortably and going white. He can feel the mirror move with each thrust.

'We'll see if it fits - either of our - schedules,' Tseng says, eyes closing.

'Tseng,' Rufus says, then 'Tseng, Tseng,' more urgently, until Tseng gets the point and reaches up to shove his fingers into Rufus' mouth, muffling him. Rufus sucks on the digits, breathing loudly through his nose. Tseng moves them in and out, scissoring first and choking later, deeper each time until he can almost glance the tips of his fingers against the back of Rufus' throat and Rufus is gagging and choking and coming.

-

Rufus goes home first, alone, while Tseng clears the bathroom, leaving it spotless. Tseng then returns to his office, where he works for half an hour, forty five minutes, an hour, two, until another knock sounds on his door. This time Tseng doesn't have to look up when he says, 'Enter.' There's only one other person who has access to this level and who's likely to be in the office at nine in the evening.

'So,' Veld announces, coming in. He sets a cup of coffee down on Tseng's desk and seats himself comfortably in one of the free chairs, sipping on his own drink. 'I heard the heir came visiting.'

'Mm,' Tseng nods. He shuts down the computer and turns off his screen.

Veld nudges the coffee mug closer to Tseng, musing aloud in the process. 'I wonder, every once in a while, if the reason you turned out this way is because I never placed enough people your age in this department for you to interact with, but then I realised that this isn't precisely true.' Tseng snorts. Veld goes on. 'There's Reno. Rude. Elena, if your tastes run that way.'

'I don't have a taste for any particular sort,' Tseng comments.

'Unless you count blond, rich and young?' Veld provides. Tseng doesn't wince, but the expression on his face speaks volumes to Veld. 'It's good practice, in a way. You're keeping it in the company, which is a piece of my advice I'm glad you listened to. But –'

'You're going to give me pithy lectures until I tell you what he wants, aren't you,' Tseng asks, a note of surrender in his voice.

Veld doesn't smile, he just cocks his head in general agreement and waves his mug in the air. 'Your business is my business, Tseng.'

Tseng takes a mouthful of his drink and leans back. 'Why? Because you're paid by this company to interfere, or because you're interested in my life in general?'

'There are many ways of answering that question,' Veld points out. 'None of which would be any more true than they'd be false.'

'Spare me the relative mortality,' Tseng says wryly.

'Spare me your stubborn pride,' Veld shoots back.

'I don't precisely know what he wants,' Tseng rallies, sharp. 'Chicago changed him. He knows better now than to simply tell me what it is he has planned; he understands that I may violate his trust. What he's looking for is an ally.'

'And is he finding one in you?' Veld asks, quietly. 'Everyone needs their vices, but there's a difference between sleeping with Shinra's boy and siding with him.'

'You're not one to talk about vices,' Tseng murmurs, eyes hooded.

'Maybe not,' Veld agrees. 'But you're in a unique position.' He stands, gathering up Tseng's mug alongside his own. 'Following this through to its logical conclusion, there'll come a day where you'll have to choose between telling me the truth and cutting Rufus Shinra loose, or going with him and seeing how long it'll be before someone whom you actually respect cuts you loose in return.' Veld exhales, loudly, shaking his head. 'Those are the cards on the table, Tseng. It's worth mentioning that I'm an older player than the boy.'

Tseng brings his hand to his mouth, rubbing at his chin. 'Does that make you a better player?'

Veld smiles, looking proud. 'Point. But even if Rufus may one day have you on his side, you're only one man.' He salutes Tseng with the mugs as he turns to leave. 'Numerically speaking.'

'Veld,' Tseng calls just before the older man exits his office.

'Yes?'

'You give the world's worst advice, and would make a terrible father figure.'

'Mm?'

'Thank you,' Tseng says.

Veld laughs. 'I'm the last person you should ever want to thank, Tseng. Go home. Take a bath. You stink.'

-

 _Now_

Balthier asks, 'So what's with Tseng and his cruel and unusual methods of bathroom-product torture? I was cursing his bleeding ancestors for days, Rufus, days.'

Through the fan of his fingers against cool glass, Rufus grins at his city's heights and falls. 'Who are you to judge another man’s idea of romance?'


End file.
